Xbox One: Game Downloads

One of things I was most eager to test on the Xbox One was the ability to purchase, download and install games—even new, AAA titles—directly on the console. And sure enough, it works, with caveats. But it's still the preferable option.

Note: There are issues related to game downloads, such as disc-based game purchases and game sharing, that I will discuss in future articles. This one addresses game downloads only.

The dream is simple enough: The new console arrives, you connect it to the Internet, browse the Store, and start downloading. In minutes, presumably, you're up and running.

Presumably.

Here's how it really works. The new console arrives, you connect it to the Internet, browse the Store, and start downloading. And then you wait.

And wait, and wait.

How long you wait will vary according to your Internet connection and the game(s) you download. The thing is, most of the first-gen Xbox One games are huge, in the 30-40 GB range. But some are more sophisticated than others. I'm still testing, but of the three games I've purchased (and downloaded and installed) through the console, I've seen some glacial download times.

"Call of Duty: Ghosts" and "Battlefield 4" are the least sophisticated of the games I've purchased, which makes sense as they are both multiplatform titles with legacy technologies. I wasn't able to accurately measure the download speeds, as I had to give up both and let them finish overnight. (On separate nights.) I will say this, though: I downloaded "Ghosts" on the PS4 the previous weekend and while that download was also glacial, it did at least ask me if I wanted to get single- or multiplayer first. The Xbox One version did not offer this nicety.

Understanding that these games were perhaps an unfair measure, I then turned to "Ryse: Son of Rome," which is an Xbox One exclusive title. As expected, it was more sophisticated. But an early promising moment proved disappointing nonetheless: At 3 percent downloaded, the Download tile in the Store changed to "Play," and I briefly figured that the game would work like a streaming video download. Nope.

Instead, the only thing that worked in the game was the Settings interface. The single- and multiplayer experiences would "launch" but then show a basically blank "Installing" screen with a progress bar. Based on a bit of back and forth, I determined that single player would finish first so I sat on that to measure the progress.

I have a 50 Mbps fiber connection through FIOS. 21 minutes after I triggered the "Ryse" download, I was able to start playing the single player experience. 33 minutes after the start, I was able to start multiplayer. I didn't really get into either because I wanted to measure the full download time, but in interacting with people on Twitter, I discovered that some had started playing the single player game and run into invisible walls here and there because the game was still downloading. Kind of like a video stream can buffer from time to time, I guess.

Is this better than waiting for the full game to download? Yes it is. Absolutely it is.

I don't know about you, but the last time I had to regularly wait for a download to complete overnight I was using a dial-up modem. So this staged download type offered by the Xbox One is definitely preferable and will no doubt get even better as developers start writing their titles to take advantage of this. One can easily imagine a game downloading in discrete chunks—single player levels, multiplayer maps, whatever—and offering a much more seamless experience.

As for Ryse, the full game download took a very long 2 hours.

But the important thing to note here is that this download time is in many ways unimportant. I only noticed it because I was watching. Most people would simply start playing the game at some point. And it would just work.

And really, what's the alternative? Thanks to prerelease whining, those who purchase disc-based must now insert those discs into the console before they can play the game. That is completely unacceptable, and it makes the digital download option, though ponderously slow for now, the far more compelling game acquisition choice, in my opinion.

It's not better, but an overnight download is not the norm. That was over the first 48 hours after launch. Today's 35 GB download took only 2 hours, and it was playable after 21 minutes. As someone else noted in the comments, it took the disc version of Ghosts about 30 minutes to install.

"an overnight download is not the norm."?
LOL, says you with your 50Mbps fibre!
I'm stuck on 5Mbps. On a good day. With a tailwind. Downhill.
Well, OK, maybe not downhill, that doesn't make sense, but you get the drift.
I'll stick to discs for the time being, thank you!

I was going to point on that. The article is a bit biased on people having fast connections. I wonder what's the average home broadband connection in the US and in other parts of the world.
Here in Argentina I have 6 Mbps and here it's probably higher than the average, and though there's faster options most of the time the price is too high.

So basically, it's the difference from having a "very long" 2 hour (?) 40 Mb download or what is probably a couple overnight downloads which I personally consider to be more realistic.

I may be mistaken as I haven't purchased any disc-based games for X1 but I thought that even after installing a game from a disc you still had to insert the disc to play it. If that's the case then waiting for a few hours (or even overnight) is still preferable IMO as you won't need to get up to change discs to play a different game.

I haven't listened to music from a CD in at least 5 years. Why would I want to get up and swap discs into my drive that sounds like a jet engine spinning up for takeoff (based off my 360 experience) when I want to play a different game? Downloads are always better. Discs are the past.

Paul, can you tell me if digital content will only be available via the XBox game store? I like the idea of buying all my games digitally, but I don't like the idea of always paying full price.

PS4 digital content can be purchased on Amazon, where there have already been $10 off deals. I really don't want to buy a PS4 instead of an XBoxOne, but if it means I'll save $10 on say, 30 games, over the life of the console, that's hard to ignore.

What concerns me more than time, is the download caps that some ISPs have. Comcast in my area has a 250GB cap for the month. Combine downloading games from XBOX and Steam and then streaming HD Netflix and others, 250GB goes very quickly. Currently they have suspended the cap but in the future they say they will reinstitute. If you exceed the cap, then additional data costs will be incurred just like a cell phone.

actually there IS a way and the PC ecosystem is yet again the answer (funny as everybody says the PC is dead yet nothing else can quite replace its mature ecosystem).

what do PC gamers do? well, companies let them PRE-download games which will only run after the 12:00am mark on the day of the release. This works great because
1) you can be sure to download the game early avoiding release panic server overloads.
2) you can download the game even if your connection is not FIOS that you have up to a week to finish.
3) it will be even faster than getting it on disc: UPS will not deliver the game at 12:01am

yet again the PC proves the superior ecosystem which mobile and console have yet to match, or replace.

Superior? Do you mean the fact that you have to belong to 2-3 or more online stores, each with their own client clogging up your PC (Steam, Orgin....etc).

Or do you mean superior cheating? Whole games like BF3 pretty much ruined by hoards of cheaters on the PC.

Or do you mean having to deal with Windows, its constant updates, malware, driver updates.

Or do you mean the fact that PC hardware while more powerful, can't ever be fully utilized by the developers because they need to code a common level of the platform. You know how many developers say that you get 2 to 1 out of the hardware of a console vs a PC because with a console you can eek out the last drop of performance because every console user has the same hardware.

Or is it because you can get a tattoo that says "Master Race" because you are a PC gamer?

1. Computers can have 5 or more hard drives up to 4tb each so Steam, Origin, Gamestop, etc does not clog up our systems.
2. Cheaters are everywhere
3. Consoles have updates, even driver updates but I will give you the malware issue.
4. That must be why console games run at more than 1080p, no wait that's PC games that always have better graphics since they have up to date hardware. Both Microsoft and Sony wanted servers that would host both console and PC gamers but consoles are always to laggy.
6. Wow just had to trot out the Natzi reference to so how silly you really are.

PC? I have a $1500 PC that I built that sits in a corner even though I only built it 6 months ago with all the latest hardware and software. It's not that PC's are out of most people's price range. It's that they're out of SOME people's price range. Wherever you find the most people to play Battlefield 4 or COD, that's where the fun will be, not if you can house 32GB of unnecessary RAM just to say you have it. All my friends have massively expensive PC's as well, but we all prefer to play on console. That's where the common gamer resides. The enthusiast resides on PC and is snobbish about it.

Thanks Paul... I was just thinking about this because I was going to get another game and was wondering do I go physical or digital. In my mind, my time is more important than the wait to download so I am going digital for all future games.

(loosely related to downloads) have you seen the insane price of the angry birds title in the store, £30+ here in the UK, it probably has a lot of extra content compared to a mobile version but that is just a silly price

This is one area I see as an issue especially for me. Love the unit, and will get one probably in the next month or so. The idea though of downloading a 40gb file would take me personally about 2-3 weeks depending on what I was doing during the day. I have a 0.4 connection where I live, which is fine for playing on-line but not for downloading games. Have purchased some PC titles through steam and I can wait a week or more to play and most of those are under 10GB.

So what happens when that small 500Gb, not user upgradeable drive fills up? Which will happen faster than you think with games being 35Gb+ not including DLC. How are you supposed to go back and play older games you deleted to make space for that new COD title? Hopefully the Xbone will support external storage and allow you to manage which games are on the external drive and those on the primary as I don't believe you will be able to play from external storage.

The other day an article showed up on Geek.com that confirmed the internal hard drive is replaceable. It is a 2.5-inch SATA II hard drive, though its hard to get to and youll void your warranty, but putting any other hard drive in there would work. There is also the USB 3.0 port. I am sure the next update will bring external storage trough that port for an external hard drive or USB pen drive.

"...But the important thing to note here is that this download time is in many ways unimportant. I only noticed it because I was watching. Most people would simply start playing the game at some point. And it would just work.

And really, what's the alternative? Thanks to prerelease whining, those who purchase disc-based must now insert those discs into the console before they can play the game. That is completely unacceptable, and it makes the digital download option, though ponderously slow for now, the far more compelling game acquisition choice, in my opinion."

______

What's the alternative? Come on...;) You know better than that. The alternative is clear: it's a Windows box and Steam, just for starters. Steam provides download bandwidth that will get close to maxing out your Fios connection, I would assume, as it maxes out my connection, and Steam provides clear feedback as to the download speeds you're getting and the progress of your download, etc. Steam is just one of many such services available globally for Windows PCs. Fire up your PC and go to Steam and download the same/similar stuff (there's much more game software exclusive to the PC than there is exclusive to either xBox) and make the comparison. That would be the appropriate alternative.

OK, now you know why Microsoft's new xBone network never crashed the first couple of days--they've really chopped down the bandwidth. You'd be entirely right if you said that was not acceptable, because it isn't. At least to me. But then, I've stayed clear of all this.

But speaking about alternatives--assuming the bereft individual simply doesn't have a computer and xBone is all he has, then buying a game disk and installing it in at most an hour or so is certainly far, far better than having a 50mb/s Fios connection reduced to a 400k p/s download speed (or lower, possibly) and having to wait *overnight* to play the game. (Suppose you drop connection in the middle of the night and have to start over the next day?) Ridiculous. The disk is the far better solution for xBone, clearly. The xBone network is not ready for much at this point.

Speaking of the disk-based stuff, do the math and figure out just how many games will fit (at 20-40 gigs apiece) on the xBone hard drive. Not very many. (And please, the files on the disk are 100% digital--the files you download are no different at all. They are exactly the same.)

One last thing...Microsoft is giving you what Microsoft chooses to give you. All the "whining" on earth won't change that fact...;) Everything said up to now you can wipe right out of your mind because none of it counts. Microsoft has the power, and is the only entity with the power, to provide you with whatever level of service it chooses. It doesn't matter what *we think* Microsoft "said" at some point before now. What matters is what Microsoft delivers. And now you know what that is. All whines should henceforth be directed at the only party capable of changing things: Microsoft. (I think it is silly to blame people not employed by Microsoft and in no position to decide anything that Microsoft does, with the obviously very poor condition of this network at the moment.)

Seriously, Steam is designed for mainstream use, imo. It's great, but it's only one outlet, as I mentioned. It's not even slightly difficult to use. I understand about the staged downloading--but you should not be forced to such artificially slow downloads, imo. But, maybe as time progresses they'll fix it. Have fun!

Downloaded games are okay, but 50Mbps connections are the exception, not the norm. Purchased disc-based games are better for most people that don't have that kind of speed, and you can resell them to make some money back, but rented games are better because there is too much of a spread between the buy-back and sell-off price of used games to make them worthwhile.

It's going to be totally intolerable at my 4 Mbps connection. A first class disk delivery is likely to turn up faster. Even at 10 Mbps, which is more the norm in the UK, it doesn't seem attractive. For me, this also kills the other benefits of this approach: sharing my purchases to other consoles is hard to see as a benefit if every single one of them has to sit and wait for hours for the download to complete. In particular, the signing into a friend's console to play your games is a complete non-starter. I don't care about reselling games, so the original model where installing from disk was the same end result as downloading was much more attractive.

There is one other advantage of buying the disk. Microsoft has a monopoly on the online store, whereas disk resellers have to compete on price. Buying on disk is typically noticeably cheaper.

Very recently I sold all of my discs for 360 games and bought the digital counterparts.
Digital downloads are preferable to me because they take up no physical space and it keeps all of my games organized in one menu on the console.
Yes, I know I can get used discs for a fraction of the download price. For me it's not so much about cost but uncluttering the living room.
I will be excited to buy digital games on day one with Xbox One.

I was looking forward to going all digital, but the pricing for digital games here in the UK is essentially criminal.

A quick example - Battlefield 4 on disc for PS4/XO from Amazon UK costs £47, which is already £8 more than the PS3/360 version. In American money, that's $76. Expensive, right?

On digital though, things really get crazy. On PSN, the PS4 version of BF4 comes in at £63 ($102), or £55 ($89) on Xbox One. Why the PS4 versions are much more expensive than the already obscenely over priced XO version is a mystery.

So I'm forced to buy over priced discs, as opposed to criminally over priced downloads. At least I can sell the discs when I'm done with them and try and offset some of the extortionate price.

Microsoft screwed it up by listening to the whiners and disabling the function to play a retail bought game without a disc.
I like having the retail copy, but hate the disc for anything other than install.

You're misconstruing what the "whiners" wanted. It's not like we all just sat back and said "You know what, I really love the smell of a good ol' disc, and that nice loud whirring noise it makes is just fantastic!"...

The "whiners" just wanted to rent games, trade games in, and let friends borrow their games. MS and Sony need to prove that digital only is the most convenient. Right now 40GB installs with a 500GB HD that can't be replaced (Xbox) isn't helping. Playing hop swap with maybe 10 games on internet connections that will underwhelm, or having data caps. Not exciting stuff here.

It also doesn't help that digital versions of games are always more expensive than Amazon / Walmart discs. Microsoft could really take a page out of Steam's book if they wanted people to embrace digital only.

Well, let's see. I remember how infuriating it was to wait for downloads on a 2400 baud modem. Then there was some relief after upgrading to 14.4. Now we're downloading games that are 20, 30, 40 GB in size. Holy cow! When will this end? 200 GB when 4K is the norm? I am not totally unhappy with my U-verse speed -- I mean, at 15 Mb it's okay, not the best -- so what I basically do during Steam sales is just let the computer sit there for a while -- quite a while -- as it grabs everything. What choice do I have ... I usually accept things the way they are. Hopefully along with everything else related to gaming this is an area that keeps improving. But seriously, I've never been as excited about gaming before as I am in this era -- overall I think there's been tremendous progress.

It's probably going to be sometime well into next year before developers alter their process to properly support staged downloads. In the past they had to consider things like where on the disc to place which files for best effect. Such as placing FMV on the slowest part of the disc since that didn't affect load times.

Some may recall the early days of the Playstation, when a few games had mini-games to distract the player while loading data to RAM. Namco, for instance, drew upon their library of arcade classics and things like a version of Galaga between Ridge Racer loads. I wouldn't be surprised if we see stuff like that added to download versions of games to make the player less aware of the time it's taking to get to the game proper.

A good example of this is the online install of Office 2013, which has a little introductory video that buys a bit more time for the installer to do its work before the selected app is minimally usable.

You'll need to buy about 10-12 games to fill up the 400GB of HDD space available for user content and by that time, Microsoft likely will have an update out which will allow storing (but not playing) games on external drives.

My suggestion would be let the whiners have their discs, but offer a retail kiosk --> USB drive at retail stores. You could quickly copy any digital purchase tied to your account and sneaker-net it home. The kiosk could be pre-loaded with all games and latest updates.

I will wait to go all digital until I see if there will be any type of sales or promotions like on steam. I got 3 launch Xbox One games for $49 bucks a piece so by going disc I am already ahead of the game by $30.

I also hope MS lets up opt in to DRM. I dont mind having a once a day check on my console. Let me buy disc games and opt in so I can play without the disc in the tray.

Hey Paul. Agree with you 100%. I happen to have one game (2K14) on disc and the install yesterday was brutally long. I actually had to install overnight as well. Do you think this is normal or could I have a drive issue? It worked but it took forever!

Well I don't know about you guys but I purchased an xbox one this evening with FIFA digital dl. Started at 2100 installing it's now 2310 and I'm only on 11% !!! Wtf !! Am I just being eager or is this Stone Age dl time? Also does the box need to be on to carry on dl or can I turn it off? Sorry I am a newbie to these kind of things

I'm looking at purchasing COD Ghosts from the online store, and am wondering what will happen as I've already downloaded the disk version - I initially rented the game from the video store.
Has anyone done this? Hopefully its simply just a licence code I get after purchase, to then access the game I've already downloaded?

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